VOLCANO MADNESS: Re: [Geology2] Statistical Justification Comments

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Re: [Geology2] Statistical Justification Comments

Ben,

Your use of odds/probabilities/chances is still considered a swag (serious wild ass guess), which is the beginning stage of developing a theory. And why

are you only using impacts within the past 100 million years? There are many others that could be included within your paper that could substantiate your thesis... if you can show the same resulting antipodal volcanism.

You have ignored my comment about using past papers written about this topic and therefore, you have no base upon which to build your own theory. You have not joined a conversation; you have gone off in some corner talking to yourself (professionally and metaphorically speaking, that is). And this is the reason why you are not taken seriously. You can shout statistics and incidents and connections, but you have nothing else to back your theory. It's still in the swag stage.

Get some real evidence. Find others who have theorized the same on perhaps a different occurrence of antipodal volcanism. Then come back and present a genuine paper, written in standard form. I'll take you more seriously and I think others will, too. You just need to spend some time in a library doing some solid research.

Lin

On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 12:51 AM, Ben Fishler <benfishler@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Lin,

I have been told that I have presented a qualitative analysis rather than a quantitative analysis. Yet, I fully intended that the analysis have a strong quantitative component and I still believe that it does have this component.

I have been told that presenting statistical evidence as "odds" is suitable to gambling, not to scientific work.

I use the term "odds" for easy, everyday consumption. I could have used the words "chances" or "probability" instead. Any differences in the meanings of these words would have been a distinction without a difference in the context within which I would have used them.

Probability, chances or odds are not just used in gambling. They are also used in the evaluation of important evidence in everyday life, including scientific testimony in murder trials.

It is not unusual for a prosecutor or an expert scientific witness to present blood evidence in these terms: "There is less than one chance in 10 billion that the blood on this glove could have come from someone other than the defendant." In this situation, there may be a sample size of only one bloody glove. Of course, bloody gloves have been known to have courtroom theatrical problems all their own.

I have a sample size of only four. There are no other large (larger than 55 km in diameter) impacts during the past 100 million years that we know of. Just like the bloody glove, I have to work with what I have.

What I have is the comparison of antipodal mantle plume volcanism with random mantle plume volcanism at other locations on the Earth. The Standard Theory says that mantle plumes happen at random locations throughout the Earth. The total surface area of the Earth is approximately 200,000,000 square miles. The surface area of a circle with a radius of 750 miles is 1,770,000 square miles. Therefore, if mantle plume volcanism occurs contemporaneously (allowing for doming) within 750 miles of the antipode of a large impact, then the probability that it was a random mantle plume event (as opposed to a cause and effect example of mantle plume volcanism at the antipode of a large impact) is less than 1%.

This situation of antipodal volcanism occurs in all four large impacts during the past 100 million years. There is also the separate characteristic of the largest (by far) episode of volcanism occurring within less than one million years of the largest (by far) impact, when compared to a 100 million year period. In fact, they occurred almost concurrently.

I calculated the probabilities based upon this data. I consider this to be quantitative analysis.

I came up with a total probability of less than one in ten billion. I leave it to the reader to determine their own probability analysis. Regardless, I don't see how the probability could be anything but extremely small that the mantle plume volcanism found at the antipode could be merely random.

Can anyone look at this evidence and NOT believe that it is a powerful indictment of the random mantle plume thesis?

Regards,

Ben Fishler